2012

2011

Index Theologicus: A Fount of Information on Theology and Religious Studies – Tübingen University Library and De Gruyter Announce Cooperative Agreement

November 19, 2012

The academic publishing house De Gruyter has signed a cooperative agreement making its entire collection of journals in theology and religious studies available to Tübingen University Library’s Index Theologicus. This comprehensive database contains article information taken from more than 600 periodicals and from numerous Festschriften and conference publications from all over the world.

“A database like this is not static; to flourish, its volume and quality must grow constantly,” says Dr. Martin Fassnacht, director of theological collections at Tübingen University Library. “In the past, we were only able to index part of De Gruyter’s journals, so we are delighted to receive this abundance of new material. The cooperation allows our users to access complete articles online directly after performing a search.”

The scholarly importance of the Index Theologicus is reflected by its popularity, with over 10,000 individual searches each week. The database features universal authority files (Gemeinsame Normdateien, or GNDs), which assign individual numbers to each author, making it significantly easier to find a specific publication.

“De Gruyter uses global abstracting and indexing services to guarantee its authors large distribution and long-term content availability,” says Dr. Anke Beck, Vice President of Humanities at De Gruyter. “The data of the Index Theologicus are linked via the Südwestverbund (SWB) to most state libraries in Germany and can be accessed internationally, making this cooperation a cornerstone in our strategic orientation.”